A computer system has traditionally contained both volatile and non-volatile memory devices. In this manner, due to their relatively faster access times, volatile memory devices, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices, have typically been used to form the working memory for the computer system. To preserve computer system data when the system is powered off, data may be stored in non-volatile mass storage devices associated with slower access times, such as magnetic media or optical media based mass storage devices.
The development of relatively high density solid state persistent memory technologies is closing the gap between the two technologies; and as such, the amount of persistent, byte-addressable “memory,” which serves both traditional “memory” and “storage” functions is being ever increasingly used. Due to growing use of this memory, distributed computing systems are expected to become increasingly more common. With a distributed computing system, computing nodes typically are coupled together with cluster fabric (network fabric, for example) for purposes of sharing, or pooling, memory and storage resources of the nodes.